Van Dyck and Britain: explore the exhibition, room 2

Van Dyck’s return to England: Royal Portraits

By the time van Dyck returned to London in 1632 as painter to Charles I, he had an international reputation. His association with Rubens and study of earlier Italian artists such as Titian had given van Dyck a unique mastery of both northern and southern European artistic traditions.

These royal portraits show van Dyck’s ability to mix fantasy and reality in the representation of kingship. Charles I relied upon van Dyck to provide the idealising portraits that would bolster his public image. These paintings embodied the kings view of divine rule and of Neoplatonic ideas about the self-regulation of the passions. The portraits suggest a happy, settled ruling family at the head of a nation at ease with itself and with its King.

It was all an illusion. ‘Loving rule’ may have been implied by the portraits of the King and Queen, the image of Cupid and Psyche, or the masques in which the royal couple participated at court. In fact, Charless relationship with Parliament had broken down, leaving him increasingly isolated. There was fear of Catholic conspiracies and discontent that the Protestant king had taken a Catholic wife.